


Time and the TG3

by twitchbell



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Humour, Tenth Doctor Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-23
Updated: 2010-06-23
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twitchbell/pseuds/twitchbell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"James, Richard and Jeremy had all complained bitterly that the planet the Doctor had brought them to was just too Earth-like to be interesting.  Now, the Dalek was definitely not Earth-like, but James wasn't at all elated to see this particular example of an alien life form."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes liberties with the Dr Who series if it suits the plot. Set some time after 'The Runaway Bride' (shown Christmas 2006) when the Doctor was on his own, prior to Season 3.

"Who put that there?"

"Who put what where?"

"That bloody blue box in the corner! I just stubbed my toe on the damn thing!" Richard scowled as he rubbed at his foot. "Did you put it there?"

"Yes, of course I did, Hammond." James stirred himself enough to look up from his morning newspaper as Richard joined him in his usual place on the seating. Top Gear Dog displayed her normal lack of energy and flopped down in a fluffy heap at her master's feet. "All on my own, I lifted up the bloody blue box – nice alliteration, by the way – and put it over there in the corner just so you could stub your toe on it. And, by the way, you're late."

"I overslept. If it wasn't you, it was Clarkson, then."

"What? With his dodgy back? Don't be such a clot. Oh, and he's done some rewrites on the script."

"Well, obviously he got someone else to move it. Rewrites? Bugger!"

"Who else would he get to move it? There's only the three of us here right now. And your dog." James gave TG an absent-minded pat on the head, and she responded to the attention with a happy wag of her tail.

"I still bet it was Jeremy's idea," Richard grumbled.

"What was my idea?"

The third member of what Richard sometimes referred to – purely in his own mind, of course – as the unholy triumvirate came into the hangar. He was clutching a fat wad of papers. Richard eyed them in irritation. He was late, he'd stubbed his toe and now it looked like he had some more lines to learn. Thanks, Jeremy.

"That box thing," said James, staring down at his newspaper again. "Over there in the corner. Hammond thinks you put it there with the express purpose of annoying him."

"It's got nothing to do with me," Jeremy said, gazing at it curiously. "Maybe that man next to it knows something? Who the hell is he, anyway? I've never seen him around before, although he does look rather like –"

"What man?" James turned his head. "Good Lord, he's a Hammond clone. Only taller and –"

"Well, it isn't exactly hard to be taller than Hamster," Jeremy put in, earning him the resigned death glare that Richard had had plenty of opportunities to perfect in the last few years.

"And he has better dress sense," James concluded. "He looks sort of trendy."

"James, you have no feel for fashion whatsoever," Richard said. "You wouldn't know trendy if it came up and smacked you round the head."

"Just because I don't choose to follow fashion's dictates doesn't mean I'm not aware of them," James said with dignity.

"He's not wearing any ID badge," said Jeremy. "That's against BBC regulations."

"And we all know you hold those in such high regard," James said dryly. He raised his voice. "Excuse me?"

The stranger had been staring around at the studio looking rather puzzled. Now he turned in their direction as if registering their presence for the first time.

"Yes, you, man in the natty suit," Jeremy said. "We'd like to know what you're doing here, and if that box thing has anything to do with you."

"Natty suit, eh?" The stranger looked absurdly pleased at that appellation. "Glad it meets with your approval. What am I doing here? Well, mostly, I'm wondering where "here" actually is, because it certainly isn't anywhere I was planning to be. And yes, that box thing is mine. It's my TARDIS." The last was said with a certain amount of pride, like Richard would have said "It's my Zonda." If he had a Zonda, which he didn't.

"Well, thank you. That makes everything about as clear as mud," Jeremy returned, sounding less than happy with this explanation.

"Who are you?" said Richard.

"My name is the Doctor."

"Doctor of what?" Jeremy asked bluntly.

"Ooh this and that. Lots of things, actually." The Doctor strolled towards them with a wide grin and then crouched down to give TG a scratch behind the ears. She whined in delight and rolled onto her side, her feathery tail beating against the man's legs. "Nice dog, by the way. Very - what's the word? Ah! Fluffy! That's it! Very fluffy."

"Er, thanks," said Richard. "What's a TARDIS?" There was something about the way the Doctor had said it that spelled out the word in capital letters, making it as much an acronym as NATO or SPECTRE.

"My transport," said the Doctor, as if this should be obvious. "I travel in it."

"You travel in a blue box?" Jeremy said, sounding less than impressed. "Where are its wheels? And what do you use to tow it? Is that thing actually some sort of compact _caravan_?" He didn't so much pronounce the last word as spit it out.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows, possibly a bit taken aback at the amount of odium Jeremy managed to pack into what was, on the face of it, a perfectly harmless word. He carried on fondling TG's ears and she responded to the attention with adoring affection.

"It doesn't have any wheels. And nothing tows it. She's sort of self-propelled, if you like. I landed her here by mistake."

"Landed? What? You mean like a plane?" Richard looked up at the roof of the hangar. No hole was visible.

"No, not like a plane." The Doctor said more than a little impatiently. "It was like, well, like something materialising out of the space-time vortex into this dimension. Time and relative dimensions in space – TARDIS. See?"

"Oh, I get it!" James sounded as if he suddenly understood everything. "Come on, own up. This is a wind-up, isn't it?"

"She does travel in time and space!" The Doctor looked as wounded as a small child whose favourite toy has been sneered at.

"What? A blue box? Prove it, go on," Richard challenged.

"And how shall I do that? You want me to take you somewhere, is that it?" The Doctor's voice was suddenly full of sly challenge.

Jeremy, James and Richard exchanged glances and reached an unspoken agreement. This was mostly based on the assumption that the Doctor was a harmless lunatic and they wouldn't actually be travelling anywhere, but with just a hint of you-never-know-so-let's-just-see-what-happens. After all, there had been some pretty weird things happening over the last couple of years with all those alleged alien invasions - which may have been actual alien invasions, mass hallucinations or secret military technology gone bonkers depending on which official explanation or conspiracy theory you bought into. Time-and-space-travelling-bloke-in-a-blue-box sounded quite sane in comparison to some of the stuff Richard had read about. Especially the bit about the Royal Family being lizards. Or were-wolves.

"Yes," said Richard firmly. "Go on, take us somewhere."

"Can we all fit in your blue box?" asked James doubtfully. "Including the dog?"

"Oh, it's bigger than it looks," the Doctor said airily.

Jeremy smirked. "I bet you say that to all the girls."

\----------

"It's a bit dull here, isn't it?" Richard said, gazing around with an expression of extreme disappointment. "I liked your TARDIS, but this is a bit of a letdown, really."

"A bit _dull_? Is that all you can think of to say after I take the trouble to bring you to an exciting new world? Most people I bring to alien planets say things like 'wow!' and 'the sky is pink – that's so cool!," the Doctor complained.

"I take it you travel with a lot of young women, then." Richard clipped TG's lead to her collar. "Because they're the only sort of people likely to think a pink sky is _cool_."

The Doctor opened his mouth, appeared to think, and shut it again.

"I can see it's got two suns, blue grass and a pink sky, but other than that it looks pretty much like Earth. All the people look exactly like people, only they're dressed like they belong in an old cowboy film, and they live in rustic cowboy type dwellings," Jeremy observed disparagingly. "They've even got _horses_!"

"Now hang on a minute, there's nothing wrong with horses," Richard objected.

"Yes, but they're not very space-ified, are they?" James pointed out.

"It's an Earth colony: of course they bring Earth animals with them!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Well, the useful ones anyway ... oh, and the annoying ones that stow away on spaceships. Rats, mice, cockroaches ... Come _on_! It's a frontier world – what do you expect it to look like?"

"What's it called?" James asked.

"New, New, New, New, New," the Doctor counted each of these out of his fingers, "Grimsby."

"_Grimsby_?" Jeremy echoed in disbelief. "Someone actually named a whole planet after _Grimsby_?"

"Actually they named five planets after Grimsby." The Doctor stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared at James, Jeremy and Richard cheerfully. "New, New, New, New, New. See?"

"The only thing I'm seeing is a distinct lack of imagination," Jeremy returned sourly. "You can name planets after anything - so why the fuck choose Grimsby? _Five times_!"

"You could name planets after cars," James mused. "New Bentley. New Ferrari. That would have been much better."

"Yes, but with our luck we'd probably have ended up on a planet called New, New, New, New, New Kelisa," Jeremy said.

"Is all outer space really as dull as this?" Richard demanded. "Can't you take us somewhere a bit more exotic?"

"There's the planet of the Drashigs," said the Doctor with a glint in his eye that James found hard to interpret. "It's not like Earth at all. I think you'd find it most interesting."

"That sounds better," Richard allowed. "But TG needs to go first."

The Doctor stared at the dog.

"Go? Go where?"

"Let me put it another way," said Richard impatiently. "Is your TARDIS equipped with doggy toilets? No? Then let me just walk her up that lane for a bit until she's done her business, and then we'll come back here."

"You want to go off alone on an alien planet?" James was doubtful of the wisdom of this.

"Why not? Like you said, it's pretty much like Earth, apart from the twin suns etcetera. We'll be fine."

\----------

TG seemed quite relaxed about the whole being on an alien planet thing. She'd found some nice new smells to sniff at and was happy to take her time selecting just the right spot to do her business. Richard tried to hurry her, although he knew from experience it was rather pointless; TG liked to do her own thing in her own time.

"Come on, TG. James will be starting to worry. You know he can be a bit of an old woman, so be a good dog and do your stuff."

TG finally obliged. There was no one about, so Richard hurriedly scuffed some grass over the result. Then, towing TG behind him on the lead, he set off back up the lane to rejoin the others.

A door opened and out from a house appeared six burly cowboy types, all of them staring intently in his direction.

Richard tried his best to ignore them, but this became a non-option when the cowboy types began walking towards him en masse, moving in a rather purposeful way. Had they seen what TG had done? Were there particularly stringent laws here against dogs fouling the footpaths? If so, the least the Doctor could have done was warn him, Richard thought, feeling rather aggrieved. He was only a bloody tourist – he couldn't be expected to know all the rules and regulations.

"Okay, sorry about that!" he said. "I'll just go back and clean it up properly, shall I?"

"You will come with us," said the biggest and most threatening of the cowboy types. He had a big black beard and a scowl to match.

"Really, it's no trouble. I'm sorry and I insist on cleaning it up." Richard knew that Beardy and the others could understand him just as well as he could understand them - something to do with the TARDIS having telepathic circuits, according to the Doctor – only they seemed to still be having some serious communication difficulties.

"You will come with us," repeated Beardy.

"You know, I'd really rather not," Richard said, trying to resist the impulse to deck him one. He was not averse to a fight, but, unless he'd downed several pints, even he drew the line at taking on six tough, mean-looking men all on his own. TG clearly wasn't going to be much help – she was ambling happily alongside him, utterly oblivious to what was going on.

"We know who you are," snarled another of the men, with a blotched complexion and an unpleasant sneer.

"No, I don't think you do. I'm absolutely certain that nothing I've made has ever been broadcast to a planet with two suns, blue grass and a pink sky. Trust me on this."

Blotchy pulled a flimsy piece of paper from one pocket and practically shoved it in Richard's face.

"See? It's you. You are the Doctor."

"Ah, now I see where you're coming from." Richard stared at the paper, trying to decide if this was a helpful development or not. On balance, he decided it wasn't. The picture was a little fuzzy, as if it had been captured by CCTV and printed one too many times. "But that really isn't me. I'm a lot shorter, for a start, although I don't suppose you can tell from that picture. Is that all you've got to go on? It's a bit rubbish, isn't it?"

"And it says you talk too much," Beardy added.

"Oh shit," Richard muttered under his breath. This was looking worse by the minute.

"Give me the dog," demanded Blotchy. He tried to grab the lead from Richard, jerking TG's collar in the process. She yelped and looked up in wounded surprise. Richard took advantage of the fact that everyone was now staring at TG; he kicked Beardy hard in the shins and, when Beardy roared and slackened his grip, Richard dropped to his knees and unclipped the lead from TG's collar.

"Go on, girl, run! Get help!"

Blotchy lunged for TG, but, contrary to popular opinion, TG could run when she wanted to. On finding herself being pursued by three angry large men, she decided she certainly did want to. Unfortunately, she ran in entirely the wrong direction – up a little alleyway, instead of towards the main thoroughfare where James, Jeremy and the Doctor were waiting.

Beardy dragged Richard back to his feet by his hair, a procedure that was painful but mercifully quick, and thrust his face into Richard's.

"You will tell us where the machine named TARDIS is located!" Beardy snarled. "And then we will hand you over to the Daleks and claim the bounty!"


	2. Chapter 2

Jeremy, with customary effrontery, had reviewed the TARDIS and come to the conclusion that it possessed some really bad design flaws. As he pointed out, the Doctor had spent an inordinate amount of time darting around and leaning across the centre console to pull or press a bewildering array of levers and buttons just to keep them in flight.

"The pilot of a jumbo jet doesn't hurl himself bodily all around the cockpit to fly the plane, does he? Is this TARDIS of yours actually supposed to have a crew?" Jeremy challenged. "Or were you just trying to show off?"

James would have found the Doctor's gobsmacked expression rather amusing if he hadn't had other considerations on his mind.

"Is it just me, or has Richard been rather a long time?" he observed.

"What?" said the Doctor, looking around and seeming pathetically grateful for the change of conversation. "Oh. Well, how long does his dog usually take to perform? Or is that the same as asking how long's a piece of string?"

"Not this long," said Jeremy authoritatively. "Not unless the bloody creature's constipated again. I think we should check on him."

"Yes ... that might not be a bad idea. Come on."

They walked a few hundred yards up the road and then headed down the quiet, grass-lined lane that they'd seen Richard and TG turn into. There was no sign of either of them. Puzzled, they walked a little further, checking some of the alleys backed onto the lane. Jeremy resorted to shouting - his normal way of getting attention - but there was no response.

"Hold on." James had spotted a splash of colour ahead of them. "That's TG's lead." He picked it up with a growing sense of unease.

"It attaches to her collar, so it must have been removed on purpose. I don't like this." Jeremy looked around and found a piece of paper a few feet away. "What's this?"

"You should be able to read it with the TARDIS telepathic whatsit," said James.

"I can." Jeremy studied the contents for a few moments, and then glared at the Doctor and waved the piece of paper under his nose. "You need to see this."

"Ah," said the Doctor brightly. "That's a picture of me. Pretty poor one, though. Not my best angle, either."

"What does it say?" James asked quietly, his apprehension rising.

It was Jeremy who answered.

"As far as I can make out, it's a sort of 'wanted' poster. The Daleks -"

"_What_?" The Doctor snatched the paper. James caught a glimpse of the look on his face and gave a mental shiver. Anything that could put that sort of expression into the man's eyes was not good news.

Jeremy hadn't noticed the Doctor's face.

"Yes, the Daleks - hold on, weren't they one lot of aliens in the alleged Battle of Canary Wharf?"

"They were those pepper-pot things who were fighting the Cybermen - the 'ghosts' - if you believe in that."

James had never known quite what to believe about the Battle of Canary Wharf, or any of the other so-called alien visitations, although surely there was a limit to how many places could be accidentally destroyed in a gas leak at the exactly the same time as the people of London experienced mass hallucinations due to food poisoning. Eventually he'd just given up and filed these events away in a part of his mind he didn't visit very often. Now was probably a good time to open them up and give them a fresh airing.

"Those would be the ones," the Doctor said quietly. "Daleks are a machine hybrid, hellbent on universal conquest and domination. Old enemies of mine."

"Were you at the Battle of Canary Wharf?" Jeremy interrogated.

"Yes." The Doctor didn't elaborate.

"That might explain it." Jeremy looked at James. "These Daleks have put out some contract on the Doctor and offered what I'm assuming is a huge reward for his capture. It's fairly obvious what's happened – some idiots have grabbed our Hamster thinking he's the Doctor."

"The Daleks went into the Void." The Doctor screwed up the paper and held it, his knuckles turning white. "They should all be dead."

"Well, you said you travelled through time as well as space," said James, trying to think logically. "Can they do the same? Because if so, then -"

"No, that's not it. There was a war, the Time War. All the Daleks were destroyed throughout time, except -"

"Except they weren't," Jeremy cut in bluntly. "Some of them are obviously very much alive, and they're after you. And now some of the idiots on this planet are short-sighted enough to actually think Richard is you. Oh, this just gets better and better!"

"Well, they'll be bounty hunters. Probably too stupid or haven't got enough information to check for the obvious physical discrepancies like - "

"This isn't helping," interrupted James, raising his voice.

"No, it's not," agreed the Doctor sharply. "So shut up, both of you, and let me think."

A bark sounded from one of the alleyways and a moment later, TG came lolloping towards them with unaccustomed speed. She greeted the three of them with wild enthusiasm as if they were all old friends. Jeremy crouched next to her, clipping the lead back on her collar and then running his hands carefully over her head, back and flanks.

"Is she all right?" James asked.

"She seems fine. Maybe Richard let her go to get her out of the way."

"Maybe she knows where he went – or was taken to. Could she pick up his trail?" James wondered.

"Worth a go." Jeremy stood up and gave TG a long lead. "TG, good dog, good girl. Find Richard, find your master. Go on!"

Unfortunately TG was no tracker dog. She stood, looking up at them, clearly eager to please, but having no idea what was expected of her. After a few more moments of cajoling by Jeremy and James, she gave up and flopped down to the ground with a sad doggy sigh, head between her paws.

"Come on," said the Doctor.

"Where to?" said James. "TG doesn't know which way to go."

"No, but I do. Back to the TARDIS."

"We're not leaving here without Richard," said Jeremy immediately.

"Listen to me!" The Doctor tapped the paper. "There is an additional bounty for the TARDIS – making the total amount quite a substantial sum. So I would say it's a racing certainty that Richard's kidnappers will be heading for the TARDIS in pretty short order."

"How will they know where it is?" James asked. "I suppose your TARDIS is fairly conspicuous, seeing as it's probably the only police box on the planet, but it's not very big and this is a reasonably sized community, so – "

"Richard will tell them what they need to know. And probably sooner rather than later: the line of questioning favoured by bounty hunters doesn't tend to be all that subtle," the Doctor said somewhat evasively. "So best get a move on."

\----------

"I found this handy little tool on the ship when we stole it," said Beardy, clutching his new toy in one big hand as he circled menacingly around Richard.

Richard, securely handcuffed to a chair, didn't find it hard to believe that they'd stolen their current means of transport. He'd had time to observe it on the shuttle flight from the planet's surface, a journey that would have been a rather thrilling experience in other circumstances. The smart, sleek vessel looked the way Richard imagined a high performance spaceship would do if Porsche had designed it. The bounty hunters, on the other hand, were bunch of brainless hoodlums who surely belonged in a ship that bore more resemblance to a rusty old Ford Transit. Although obviously not entirely brainless, Richard qualified mentally, seeing as they'd somehow managed to steal a superior spaceship.

"Do you want to know what setting one feels like?" Beardy asked menacingly. There was a faint buzzing sound.

"No! Ow! That hurts, you wanker!" Setting one was the equivalent of being stung by an angry hornet. "I've already told you everything I know and you're not listening to me! The TARDIS is a big blue box. It's on a wide-ish street with some little-ish lanes running from it, not far from where you found me. I don't know what city or town it's in. And _I-am-not-the-fucking-Doctor_!"

"This has got seventeen settings," said Beardy threateningly. His expression suggested he'd be more than happy to demonstrate personally to Richard how every one of those settings worked in painful and prolonged detail.

"Boss. I think we've found it," the seventh bounty hunter reported from his station at some console or other. Richard assumed that this one was the technical brains of the outfit because he'd been left minding the ship while the others went about their mission. Maybe he'd masterminded stealing this ship in the first place. "A big blue box."

"Bring it up into the hold," Beardy ordered. "And contact the Daleks. Tell them we've now got the Doctor and the TARDIS."

\----------

"Hang on! We're moving!" The Doctor darted over to the console.

"Where are we going?" Jeremy demanded. "Did you move us? Because we're supposed to be waiting for –"

"I didn't move us; we're _being moved_. Want to take a guess at who's responsible?"

"The people who kidnapped Hammond?" James said.

"Oh, good guess! Yes, they'd be the ones. Taking the TARDIS up to their own ship. Tractor beam." The Doctor was studying readouts and looking as pleased as if he'd engineered this latest development himself.

"Where they'll also have Richard?" Jeremy wanted to be quite clear about that.

"Yes! " Then the Doctor's face fell. "And possibly they'll also have Daleks, but we'll deal with that when we have to. Ah! We seem to be arriving... airlock doors closing... pressure equalising. Good! Everybody out – quick! Best leave the dog here – good girl! – she'll be safer in the TARDIS."

James exchanged glances with Jeremy, conveying essentially the same concern: the Doctor could talk up a storm all right, but did that mean he actually knew what he was doing?

The Doctor took a quick peek outside the TARDIS door. "All clear. Come on!"

James and Jeremy followed the Doctor outside and found themselves in a large empty space that looked a bit like a deserted warehouse.

"Cargo bay," said the Doctor, looking round and pointing to what resembled big hangar doors at the far end. "The tractor beam pulled the TARDIS in through that airlock. Come on, this way." He led them at a brisk trot to the other end of the bay where there was a double door conveniently marked "exit".

"Why do we have to hurry?" James asked.

"Probably best if we're not here when the bounty hunters arrive to check out their latest acquisition."

"So, while the bounty hunters are checking out the TARDIS, we'll be planning a counterattack from the rear and catching them off their guard," Jeremy said approvingly.

"Something like that." The Doctor was a little evasive. "I tend to improvise."

"Do we need guns?" Jeremy asked.

James thought he sounded a tad too enthused by the idea; he knew how bad Jeremy"s aim was.

"Haven't got any guns," said the Doctor blithely.

"Well, that's stupid. These bounty hunters will have guns, won't they?"

"Exactly. Two sets of people with guns? In my experience, that's the sort of set-up that leads to complete disaster. And you can't outgun Daleks."

"Are there any Daleks about now?" James was understandably apprehensive. "Don't you have a sort of Dalek detector thing?"

The Doctor took a deep breath.

"Not necessary. To find out where the Daleks are, you just need to follow the screaming."

\----------

The TARDIS stood, foursquare and solid, on the floor of the cargo bay. Its appearance was met with approval by the six bounty hunters who'd gone to view it, taking Richard with them. They'd cuffed his hands in front of him; clearly they didn't want to run the risk of him escaping in 'his' TARDIS, Richard thought hollowly.

Bounty hunter number seven – Brains – had remained on the Bridge, awaiting the arrival of the Daleks. Richard had realised why that name was familiar - Daleks been the ones fighting those Cybermen aliens in London according to various sources that Richard was never quite sure he believed or not. Maybe they'd be more amenable to reason than the bounty hunters. They might actually realise that he wasn't the Doctor at all, and let him go. Although if they then captured the _real_ Doctor, that would obviously throw up a whole new set of problems.

Beardy prowled around the TARDIS, prodding and poking at the blue panels. "How do we get inside?"

"Through the door?" Richard suggested without really thinking about it.

This didn't go down well.

"This is level five!" snarled Beardy. "Stop pissing about!"

Level five was like being stabbed with red-hot knitting needles. Richard clutched his shoulder where Beardy had slammed his torture gizmo into it, and staggered back against the TARDIS. Seething with equal amounts of pain and fury he spat out, "You fucking bastard!" before belatedly realising that this probably wasn't going to improve his situation.

"Boss!" Brains" voice came over the ship's communication system. "The Dalek ship is here!"

"Let them beam directly into the cargo bay," Beardy ordered. He switched off the pain-stick and pocketed it, throwing Richard a particularly vicious look. "Let's see how much you like the Daleks' interrogation techniques then, Doctor."

A fuzzy golden cloud, resembling bubbles in a champagne bottle, manifested on the deck. As it faded, three shapes materialised within it - shapes of human-height, metal pepper pot things. Daleks. Right.

Beardy shoved Richard forward. Caught off balance, he stumbled forward onto his knees in front of the newcomers. "We've got the Doctor, and the TARDIS, just like you wanted. Give us our reward, and you can take them."

The Daleks stayed where they were, mute and forbidding. Then one glided forward a fraction, and a wave of light shot from the left stick - the one like an egg whisk - that protruded from its body. The light swept over Richard before he had time to say or do anything. It didn't hurt much, but it felt like every particle of his body had just been scrutinized in minute detail - a disquieting phenomenon all on its own.

The Dalek drew back slightly. "This is not the Doc-tor. This is a hu-man," it intoned in a flat and menacing electronic voice. The two lights on either side of its domed 'head' flashed as it spoke.

"Thank you! I've been trying to tell these morons that for the last –"

"You will be si-lent!" The second Dalek screeched and swung its centre stalk - was it an eye? - around to cover Richard. There was something horribly intimidating about it, and even Richard didn't feel inclined to argue.

Beardy, however, seemed more outraged than scared. "What do you mean, he's not the Doctor?"

"You have failed us," said lead Dalek. It swung around to the third Dalek. "This ship has a crew com-ple-ment of se-ven. Lo-cate the se-venth crew mem-ber."

"I o-bey."

The third Dalek turned and headed towards the exit. The doors opened as it covered the controls with its right stick - this one looked like a sink plunger. Richard's last glimpse was of the thing rising into the air with all the grace of a brick and floating off up the stairwell.

Beardy had been thinking. "Look, that's the TARDIS!" he shouted, gesturing at it for all he was worth. "We want our reward, right? If this isn't the Doctor, you can do want you want with him. Just give us our reward, take the TARDIS and go!"

The lead Dalek remained ominously silent.


	3. Chapter 3

The Doctor was leading them in the direction of the Bridge by what he described as 'the scenic route'; this meant he was deliberately avoiding the most obvious way because that would be the one taken by the bounty hunters. It was rather a large spaceship, James decided, and he felt it was at present distinctly under-populated. This wasn't a thought that made him happy because it evoked too many memories of sci-fi movies: surely the only reason for a ship to be this empty was because something had been picking off the crew in various horrible ways. Something alien and deadly. Possibly something like a Dalek.

The Doctor, taking the lead, was attempting to deal with Jeremy's concerns about the situation - concerns that were, in James' eyes, entirely understandable.

"So, if you're the enemy of these Daleks, what makes you think they're going to listen to you? What are you planning to say anyway? Ask them nicely to let Richard go?"

"Daleks don't do nice." The Doctor considered this a moment and then rubbed at his head. "Actually, they don't really do listening either, if it comes to that."

"Let's just check I've got this straight, then. You won't shoot them and there's no point talking to them. So what are you planning? A spot of wandless magic?"

"Shhh!" The Doctor put up one finger. "Stay back and keep quiet!"

"Why?" Jeremy demanded in a voice that was not noticeably quieter.

The Doctor pointed ahead to a junction in the corridor. "Listen!"

A low-pitched humming was coming from a stairwell.

"Daleks?" mouthed Jeremy, suddenly coming to a dead halt and looking alarmed.

The Doctor raised one eyebrow and stared at him with a "What the hell else could it be? Pizza delivery?" expression? Then he flattened himself against the wall in the shadows. Jeremy and James made haste to follow suit.

James could just about make out something rising up from the stairwell. Something shaped like a giant metal shuttlecock. He, Richard and Jeremy had all complained bitterly that the planet the Doctor had brought them to was just too Earth-like to be interesting. Now, the Dalek was definitely not Earth-like, but James wasn't at all elated to see this particular example of an alien life form. He'd seen photos of things that people claimed were Daleks - and he now realised with a sinking heart that the photos were true, only photos didn't do justice to the sheer terror of the things.

Three pointy bits stuck out from what could loosely be described as the head. At least one of them had to be a death ray, James thought surprisingly calmly. That was what they'd used to shoot the Cybermen. The gleaming metallic casing of the Dalek made it look like a robot, but the Doctor had called them machine hybrids, so there must be something organic inside.

Probably something squishy and disgusting with tentacles.

The Dalek hovered at the top of the stairwell. The domed head swivelled from side to side as if looking and listening for something. James tried not to breathe.

The Dalek settled down onto the floor and glided forward through a doorway up ahead.

A human voice from inside the room greeted it - if "What do you want?" could be described as a greeting.

The response was a high-pitched electric screech: "Ex-ter-min-ate!"

There was a flash of blue light from the room, and a horrible scream. Jeremy looked aghast. James flinched. He couldn't help noticing that the Doctor seemed to be taking this event in his stride, like it was the sort of thing happened every day.

The Dalek reappeared in short order and disappeared back down the stairwell. As soon as it was safely out of sight, the Doctor darted for the room the Dalek had just exited. He seemed to expect Jeremy and James to follow him.

"That wasn't Richard's voice," Jeremy said. It was meant to be a statement, but he still sounded like he needed some reassurance.

"Definitely not," James said. "And there was only one blast from the death ray, so there can't have been anyone else in there."

"Agreed." Jeremy sounded mostly convinced. "Come on."

The room turned out to be the Bridge. There were computerised controls along the sides and seating in front of the giant windscreen at the front. The starry black sky was marred by a dustbin-lid-shaped object that James assumed was the Daleks' spaceship, but the Doctor was ignoring that; instead he was hunched over one bank of controls, staring at the information presented on-screen while his fingers tapped out quick interrogations. He was also totally ignoring the corpse slumped at the foot of the seating.

James gazed down at the body - its eyes fixed wide, the mouth open in a horrified rictus - and wondered if he should check for a pulse. Although obviously futile, it seemed only decent.

"Is he - "

"Dead? Yes." The Doctor withdrew a pair of spectacles from one pocket, popped them on, and resumed his rapid tinkering with the controls.

"What are you doing?" Jeremy demanded, marching over to join him.

This seemed to be the sort of question that the Doctor was used to fielding. Continuing to work, he returned, "Opening a communications link to the hold. I need to be able to see and hear - ah! That does it!"

He straightened, and Jeremy and James joined him in staring intently at the screen.

\----------

The lead Dalek addressed Richard. "Do you know the Doc-tor?"

Richard swallowed nervously.

"Yes."

"You never said you knew the Doctor!" Beardy was far from happy at this revelation.

"Well, you never bloody asked, did you? You were so convinced _I_ was the Doctor that -"

"Do not speak!" Daleks didn't seem to be very keen on conversations they hadn't initiated.

"Well, I think we've earned a reward," Beardy grumbled. "That's definitely the TARDIS and whoever this is, he knows the Doctor. That's got to be worth something!"

"You will re-ceive what you de-serve."

Richard couldn't help feeling that that little statement had rather an ominous ring to it, but Beardy and his cohort seemed pleased by it. There was some smiling and backslapping going on as the third Dalek returned.

The lead Dalek swivelled around. "Re-port!"

"The last crew mem-ber has been ex-ter-min-at-ed."

Oh shit, Richard thought. It took a little longer for Beardy and company to catch on, but when they did, the general air of self-congratulation disappeared with remarkable speed.

"What?" Beardy demanded. "What do you mean, "exterminated"?"

"You have failed the Da-leks."

"Oh no, we bloody haven't!" Beardy retorted, sounding like he was the chorus for a pantomime.

The three Daleks turned to confront them, their massed voices cold and chilling in their finality. "Ex-ter-min-ate!"

Richard cowered on the floor, shutting his eyes and shielding his face with his arms, even while knowing that this was entirely pointless and pathetic. He could hear the crackle of energy bolts to each side of him, and there was blue light and screaming. Lots of screaming. He thought some of the screaming was probably his own.

Then silence. There was no sound, no movement, nothing - except a terrible smell of electrical discharge, and of burning. Richard risked a glance to either side. The bodies were sprawled as they'd fallen, eyes open, faces contorted, and quite unmistakeably dead. So, there was no need to worry any more about the bounty hunters then, Richard thought. That was nice. Now he had only his own imminent death to panic about.

Except he appeared in some strange way to have moved beyond panic. In fact, he seemed to have moved beyond doing anything other than kneeling there, not daring to speak or move, in the forlorn hope that the Daleks would forget he existed.

"You have trav-elled in the TAR-DIS."

Richard didn't know whether this required an answer, or what would be the best answer to give in the circumstances. The wrong one would undoubtedly kill him.

"You will speak!"

The Daleks got a response this time, but it came from a rather unexpected source.

"Of course he's travelled in the TARDIS!" said the Doctor's voice, amplified and filling the hold. "He's my companion. That's what my companions do. They travel in the TARDIS. With me, the Doctor."

The Daleks reacted to his statement like hounds catching the scent of a fox. They moved backwards, forwards and in small circles, seeming almost agitated.

"Doc-tor!"

"Hello there!"

"You will surr-en-der to the Da-leks!"

"Now, why would I want to do that?" The Doctor said with a heavy irony that the Daleks appeared oblivious of.

"If you surr-en-der to the Da-leks, we will free your com-pan-ion."

"Unharmed?"

"Un-harmed."

"We-ell, in that case ... okay, fine," said the Doctor chirpily. "Be with you in a tick."

\----------

The Daleks' mass extermination of the bounty hunters had been the first thing the Doctor, Jeremy and James had seen when the Doctor got the link to the hold working.

For a few horrible moments, it wasn't entirely clear whether Richard would survive the massacre. When it was apparent that he had, James felt so light-headed with relief that he had to sit down suddenly in the nearest chair. While the Doctor opened negotiations - in his own inimitable way - James proceeded to try and prise Jeremy's fingers off his arm before his grip left a permanent impression. When the Doctor cut the link, James eyed him with a look of misgiving.

"Um. I don't want it to sound like we're ungrateful or anything, but if you surrender yourself to the Daleks, doesn't that mean they'll kill you?"

"And Richard," said Jeremy tersely, finally releasing his death grip on James" arm. "What did you say the Daleks were? Machine hybrids? Hellbent on universal conquest and domination? Not nice? For fuck's sake, they're not just going to let Hammond go!"

"No, they won't," agreed the Doctor. "As soon as I arrive on the scene, he'll cease to be of any value to them."

"Then what the -" Jeremy began.

"But, luckily, I have a plan," said the Doctor, looking over the top of his spectacles as his fingers tapped quickly at one set of controls. Then he darted across to another console, repeating the procedure. "Oh, do I have a plan! A real doozy of a plan that should wipe all the Daleks out once and for all. And your roles in it will be crucial."

James and Jeremy exchanged worried glances.

"Crucial in what way?" James ventured.

"Crucial in the way that I need both of you to follow my instructions to the letter."

"Would this be something to do with those computer control thingies? Because we're both what you'd call a bit technologically challenged when it comes to stuff like spaceships that we've never seen before." James felt obliged to point this out in case the Doctor had forgotten it.

"Oh, I'm setting it all up for you. You just need watch what happens when I get to the hold and enter instructions on the computer control thingies when I give you the signal."

Jeremy got straight to the point.

"Supposing the computers don't work?"

The Doctor sighed, "Look, we're not talking about Microsoft systems here. Trust me. They'll work."

"All right. So the computers are infallible. What happens if we screw up?"

"Everybody dies," said the Doctor candidly. "So I recommend that you both listen very carefully to what I'm about to say ..."

When the Doctor had gone, in a whirlwind of last instructions and arm-waving, Jeremy and James stared at each other in silence for a long moment. Then James said, in what had to be one of the biggest understatements of all time, "He's awfully manic, isn't he?"

\----------

The Doctor seemed to be taking a long time to appear, Richard thought. Obviously this was because he was developing a rescue plan, but the Daleks were getting restless - possibly suspecting as much - so Richard was inordinately relieved to see the Doctor finally arrive at the entrance to the hold.

The Daleks instantly spun around towards him.

"You will surr-en-der your-self to the Da-leks!"

The Doctor raised his hands.

"Look, this is me, surrendering. Happy now? Sorry, sorry, stupid question. You're Daleks. You don't get to be happy, or compassionate, or proud or brave or any of those things that define most other sentient races. You poor bastards. Sometimes I could almost feel sorry for you."

"Really?" Richard was unconvinced. "Because they just killed these bounty hunters. I mean, I know they weren't nice people, but the Daleks just ... exterminated them."

"Oh, they're pretty big on exterminating," the Doctor said, sauntering over to Richard. The Daleks tracked his progress, swinging around so that they kept him in line of fire.

"You have no mor-al su-per-io-ri-ty," declaimed the lead Dalek.

"You ex-ter-min-ated the en-tire Da-lek race," said the second.

"Well, not all of it," Richard felt obliged to point out. "Otherwise you lot wouldn't be here, would you?"

It was strange how much more confident he felt simply by being in the Doctor's presence, particularly given that all he knew about the Doctor was that he travelled in time and space in a police box, and thought a planet called New, New, New, New, New Grimsby would be a nice tourist destination.

"Well, as the poet said, "The best laid schemes o" Mice an" Men, gang aft agley"," the Doctor remarked - no doubt obscurely as far as the Daleks were concerned - as he drew Richard up to his feet. "You okay?"

The question was guileless; the look in the Doctor's eyes was anything but.

"I'll do," said Richard, trying to convey alertness in his expression.

"Good man!" The Doctor took off his glasses and slipped them into his pocket.

The ship shuddered. The Daleks reacted immediately to this, suggesting that they were aware of something happening beyond the immediate vicinity, but not of the cause. Thrown into momentary disarray, they tried to turn in several different directions at once.

Then the lead Dalek swung round on the Doctor.

"Our ship has been des-troyed!"

"Really?" The Doctor arched his eyebrows in exaggerated surprise. "I wonder how that happened?"

Then all hell broke loose. There was the sound of massive machinery gearing into life, and the roar of a violent wind that would have scooped Richard up and swept him along with it had not one of the Doctor's arms looped around him, pinning him back against the TARDIS. The Doctor was yelling something against the wind that sounded like 'Not losing another one!' - which didn't make sense - when the next second the TARDIS doors opened and Richard fell backwards inside it with the Doctor landing heavily on top of him.

The wind had ceased with an abruptness that wasn't normal, and the Doctor was grinning down at him like the Cheshire cat, his hair sticking up at insane angles. Over the Doctor's shoulder, Richard caught just a glimpse of the Daleks rolling like tumbleweed past the open TARDIS door, weapons firing wildly in all directions. Richard flinched, but the shots either went wild, or they never made it past the TARDIS door.

Richard said the first thing that came into his head, which was "You're squashing me!" quickly followed by, "What just happened?" and then, "It's not windy in here! Why's it windy out there?" and, "How the bloody hell did we get in here anyway? That door was locked!"

The Doctor removed a key from his pocket and dangled it in front of Richard's nose. Then he grinned some more, which Richard didn't think was actually physically possible.

"Don't tell me you've never heard of central locking? What sort of a motoring journalist are you?" The Doctor jumped to his feet and held out a hand to Richard to help him up. "The hold doors opened, sucked the Daleks out into space. And there's no wind here because the interior of the TARDIS exists in a different dimension to the one outside."

Richard digested this.

"But if we can cross from that dimension into this one, why can"t the wind?"

"Ooh, an inquiring mind! I like that!" The Doctor launched himself at the console. "Now, hold onto something - this might get a bit bumpy."

Top Gear Dog chose this moment to find her way back to the control room fresh from whatever canine exploration she'd been engaged upon. She hurled herself at Richard with a "woof!" of delight, and he found himself holding onto her collar with his cuffed hands and bracing himself as best he could against the console as the TARDIS lurched suddenly. Looking through the open doors, Richard realised that they were moving.

"Are we being sucked out into space too?"

"Yes ... just give me a moment to adjust the dimensional stabilisers ... ah! That's it!"

The TARDIS levelled itself and Richard risked letting go of TG. She gave his hand several licks, her tail wagging. Richard patted her.

"Good to see you, too, girl. Er, Doctor?"

"Hmm?"

"Where are James and Jeremy?"


	4. Chapter 4

James stared down at the final key he'd just pressed - following the Doctor's orders - and wondered if it had been the right thing to do.

The Doctor's other orders had certainly had the desired effect. Jeremy had been given the task of destroying the Dalek ship the moment he saw the Doctor remove his glasses. He'd undertaken this with a great deal of relish even if it did just involve repeatedly pressing a big button because the Doctor had already lined up the target, pinpointing the most vulnerable areas of the ship. Apparently the Daleks hadn't bothered to put up their shielding or any such Star Trek type defences, which was a little short-sighted of them, but very helpful to Jeremy.

James had the task of opening the hold doors immediately after the Daleks' ship had been destroyed, which involved entering a sequence of three separate orders to the computer. He and Jeremy had watched in satisfaction as the Doctor and Richard fell back to safety through the TARDIS doors while the Daleks had been ripped away into the vacuum of space.

Then James had executed the final order and given the bounty hunters' ship the code to self destruct. As he couldn't even remember his own mobile phone number, he'd taken the precaution of writing the code carefully on an old till receipt from his pocket. So now there was nothing to do except wait.

"Why do you think the Doctor wanted us to blow up this ship, too?" he asked Jeremy.

"Probably because of the Daleks," Jeremy said thoughtfully.

"But they've all been blown up or sucked out into space."

"I think it's the sucked-out-into-space ones we have to worry about."

James turned and saw the three Daleks hurtling towards the windscreen, their weapons opening fire.

"Oh, cock."

"Persistent little bastards, aren't they?" Jeremy glared at them as the Daleks blazed away at the windscreen with a ruthless determination to shatter it. The lack of air and gravity outside didn't seem to slow them down in the slightest.

"If the Doctor doesn't get back to us in time, then we're going to die," James said flatly.

Jeremy couldn't deny it.

"In a blazing fireball of a spaceship, no less."

"Unless the Daleks get to us first." James had noticed the first cracks starting to appear in the windscreen, like the first fracture of ice on a frozen pond. He wondered how much longer it would hold.

"But even if they do, they'll be blown to smithereens moments afterwards. And as they seem to be the universe's big bad motherfuckers, if we destroy the last of them, what does that make us?"

"Dead," said James, very quietly. He stood up and went forward until he was standing next to Jeremy.

"I suppose that does just about sum it up. We'd be very heroic and very dead."

"I'm glad you're here with me," James said.

"Really? Because, and don't take this personally, I'd rather not be. All things considered."

A moment later their arms went around each other without any conscious thought at all as the cracks in the glass splintered into ever-widening webs. Behind them, the countdown clock reached thirty seconds.

And then there was a strange wheezing and groaning sound from behind them, like some ancient mechanical contraption was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

"Aww, cuddling! That's nice!" said the Doctor's voice cheerfully. "Probably best if you move it to the TARDIS, though, as this ship's going to blow in twenty seconds, and that window's going to go in, ooh, I'd say about eight."

They made it into the TARDIS with three seconds to spare.

\----------

"Well, that's that sorted," said the Doctor brightly as he strode over to the console and threw the lever that started the central column moving up and down.

Jeremy, James and Richard broke away from their group hug and all stared at him accusingly. Even TG looked vaguely reproachful, Richard thought.

"What?" said the Doctor. "What? What?"

"We nearly died," Jeremy pointed out through gritted teeth.

"Nearly," the Doctor admitted cheerfully. "But you didn't. Come on! That's something to celebrate!"

TG wagged her tail briefly and uncertainly.

"You did save our lives," Richard acknowledged in the interests of fairness. "But picking up Jeremy and James was a bloody close-run thing."

"That was precision timing, that was." The Doctor patted the TARDIS. "The old girl's still got it in her."

"This sort of escapade is entirely normal for you, isn't it?" James challenged.

"What? Being grabbed by the Daleks? We--ell, I suppose you could call it a bit of an occupational hazard."

"Yes, well, it isn't for us," Jeremy said pointedly, "so excuse us if we can't quite summon up the same level of joie de vivre just because we find ourselves _not dead_."

"Right." The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, which didn't make him look any less manic. "I see," he said, sounding completely confused. Then he stared down at the TARDIS console and brightened up. "Ah! You might want to watch this."

The image the Doctor was so keen to show them was the bounty hunters' ship blowing up. Richard couldn't help viewing the actual explosion as a bit of an anticlimax. It probably didn't help that the TARDIS scanner was about the same size as a portable telly: special effects always looked better on a big screen. Jeremy and James, he noted, seemed similarly lukewarm, as if it was hard to relate the small sparkly image to the place where they'd nearly died.

"That did the trick," said the Doctor, studying readouts. "Nothing left. No more Daleks."

"You mean no more Daleks _here_," Jeremy corrected him. "Given your track record, you do realise it's entirely possible that you haven't seen the last of them?"

The Doctor chose to ignore that, and busied himself instead in patting down his pockets and then fishing out a wand-like device. Richard eyed it askance; by his reckoning, he'd experienced more than his fair share of weird alien devices for one day.

"What's that?"

"Sonic screwdriver."

"Sonic screwdriver?" Jeremy's interest was caught by this. "What does it do? Besides look disturbingly phallic?"

"Well, it can unfasten handcuffs for a start."

"It doesn't hurt?" Richard looked a little less worried. "The chief bounty hunter had something a bit like that, and it had seventeen settings. We only got as far as five and it hurt."

James winced in visible sympathy. Jeremy was indignant.

"What a bastard!"

"Yeah, but he's a dead bastard, so ..." Richard held out his hands. The sonic screwdriver buzzed briefly and the cuffs fell apart in two pieces. "Thanks, mate."

"I suppose I'd better take you back then," the Doctor said. "One little trip was all I had in mind." Then he paused, as if thinking. "Although we did make a pretty good team in the end, didn't we?"

"We're like the Famous Five," said James whimsically. "You know - four people and a dog. Like in Enid Blyton's books."

"Yes, James, but two of them were girls." Jeremy sighed. "And they didn't travel around in a machine."

"So it's more like 'Scooby Doo', then?" Richard suggested. "With the TARDIS as a sort of Mystery Machine."

"Two of them were girls as well," Jeremy said in exasperation. "'The A Team' would be better - at least they were all male."

"Ah, but they didn't have a dog," James said.

"Actually," said the Doctor, "we used to call ourselves Team TARDIS."

"We? So you've had other people on your TARDIS, then?" Richard asked, diverted. "What happened to them?"

"They left."

"In one piece?" James sounded sceptical; Richard couldn't blame him.

"Yes." The Doctor hesitated, and then qualified himself. "Sort of. Mostly."

"Oh, that _is_ reassuring," said Jeremy. "Lucky for us that we're not staying around then, isn't it?"

"Ooh, I know!" the Doctor exclaimed in a sudden burst of excitement. "Before you go, how about us paying a visit to Enid Blyton? See her hard at work, give her a few ideas for a Famous Five book. Or Noddy! I love Noddy! That little car of his! And the bell, that little bell on his pointy little hat!"

Richard, James and Jeremy stared at him.

"And why the fuck would we want to do that?" Jeremy said at last.

"Hello? Famous author? You mentioned her, so I thought you ..." The Doctor's voice trailed off. "Never mind."

"Well, maybe we could just go on a quiet day trip to this planet of the Drashigs, then," James said, trying to be polite.

"Hmm, maybe that's not such a ... Another time, perhaps." The Doctor looked unaccountably shifty. "Right. Back to Earth. Same place, same time. Yes?"

"You can do that?" Jeremy didn't sound entirely certain.

"Precision timing, remember?" The Doctor frowned. "Actually, it can't be the same time, though. Not exactly. Crossing your own timeline is a bad thing. A very bad thing."

"We don't want any more bad things," James said hurriedly. "We've had enough bad things for one day. How about you make it ten minutes after we left?"

The trip back was swift and painless. When the Doctor opened the TARDIS doors and stepped outside, gesturing at them to follow, Jeremy, James, Richard and TG exited with more than a little caution, still not entirely confident that they would find themselves in the right place, let alone the right time.

The Doctor leaned against the open door of the TARDIS and looked smug as they prowled around the familiar landscape of the hangar, 'just checking' that the Doctor hadn't made any mistakes. James retrieved his newspaper and checked the date before holding it up so that Richard could verify it.

"Today's. Good." Richard nodded. "I see Saxon's increased his lead in the polls again."

"Yes. Smug git. No wonder he can't be arsed to do Star In A Reasonably Priced Car."

"Well, maybe see you around sometime." The Doctor hesitated by the TARDIS, drumming his fingers in apparent idleness on the door.

"Well, maybe," said Richard. "If you're at a loose end or anything -"

The Doctor seemed to perk up. "Really? Oh, right-o, jolly good! Time to scoot, then." He waggled his fingers in their general direction, produced one of his most dazzlingly insane grins and vanished back into the TARDIS. A few seconds later, the TARDIS faded away with a sort of distressed whinnying sound.

"Well," said James into the silence that followed. "I suppose in the light of what just happened we now need to sit down and re-evaluate our view of the world to include Daleks, Cybermen and other assorted alien life-forms."

"Or we could just save time and go straight into extensive therapy," Richard suggested.

"Or, Hammond, you could just sit down and look at the most recent script because you were late, filming starts in less than an hour, and you haven't the faintest idea what subtle witticisms lie within the revised version," Jeremy cut in, brandishing a bundle of paper at him.

"Subtle witticisms? So you got someone else to write it, did you?"

Jeremy threw the script at him.

"And don't throw things at me, you bastard! I've been brutalised enough today already," Richard complained, fielding the flying paper with more luck than skill. He glanced down at the script and then straight up again. "So, d'you think he'll be back? He seemed a bit ... lonely."

"He'd need to be more than lonely to try inviting us for another trip," Jeremy said.

"Yes," James nodded sagely. "He'd need to be desperate."

"Suicidal, more like," Richard said. "Because there's no way we'd ever set foot in that TARDIS of his again. Is there?"

"Well, obviously not," Jeremy agreed.

James nodded again.

"That would be madness."

"Not that that's ever stopped us doing anything before, of course," Richard mused. He sank down onto his seat, and TG settled herself at his feet as she always did, just as if it had thus far been a perfectly ordinary day.

"This is true," Jeremy conceded. "In fact, that's usually the main reason we do something. Because it's mad, and normal people wouldn't consider doing it."

"So, do you think the Doctor'll be back?" Richard persisted.

"Oh absolutely," said James.

"Without a doubt," Jeremy seconded, throwing himself down into his usual seat and stretching out his legs.

Richard grinned.

THE END


End file.
